In my last post I went into some detail on how easy it is to preserve peppers by pickling. And while I do pickle quite a lot of the range of hot peppers I grow every year to supply my heat-loving family and friends and allow for the several levels and types of hot pepper sauces I make for steady customers in my region, my favorite thing to do with hot peppers is to dry them.

The sauce and pot peppers, as well as sweet peppers and mild chilis like poblanos are usually frozen whole or chopped in zip lock freezer bags. It’s easy to break off a chunk and toss into any dish I’m making, and this is to my taste buds the best way to preserve sweet bells. But if you grow a lot of hot chilis like I do, there’s much more you can do through the culinary year with dried peppers than with frozen or pickled or otherwise canned.

I have found some good sources for detailed information on drying peppers and what to do with them afterwards, listed at the bottom of this post. I prefer to sun dry – in my nifty home-made solar dryer out on the front deck – but chilis can easily be dried in a commercial dryer, in the oven on its lowest setting, or in the sun directly if they’re kept whole. Flies and other insects don’t like to congregate on rip hot peppers left in the sun, as they will on tomatoes or other vegetables and fruits that are sliced and placed in the sun to dry. Thick-walled chilis like Anaheims, jalapenos, etc. take longer, of course. Fingerhots, cayennes, thai hots, etc. will dry hard and crisp in just a few hours of sun. Presuming you don’t live in a super high humidity environment, of course.

First thing to know about drying hot chilis is that you should let them turn red on the plant rather than harvest green or just beginning to turn, and waiting for them to finish on the counter. If it gets late and threatens to freeze before all your peppers are fully ripe, go ahead and freeze or pickle the green ones.

One fun – and quite decorative – way to dry ripe chilis is to string them into ristras and hang them in a sunny spot on the porch to dry. You can leave some length of stem on them when you harvest and just tie them close together with a length of string or wire, or sew through the stem end. With plenty of sun and air circulation a nice sized rostra will dry in just a few days even with big peppers like Anaheims or Serranos. If you expect rain or nights reach dew point, bring them in at night and re-hang to dry in the morning. Ristras make beautiful wreaths, and look great hanging in kitchens or dining areas. Thus they make welcome hostess gifts if you need a quick one come the holidays.

Ristras are more decorative than truly useful as a ready source of peppers to crush into flakes or powder for cooking, as they do tend to collect household dust. For culinary keeping you can store them in bags or jars, or already crushed and/or powdered in jars. Different processing serves different uses. For crushed pepper flakes like those on the table in pizza restaurants, break very dry red peppers in half, shake out as many seeds as possible, and crush them with a mortar and pestle. Sometimes this leaves big skin flakes that need to be further reduced with the back of a spoon, or you could add just a bit of sea salt to the mortar during crushing and this will tend to break up the chilis finely. Store the flakes and salt together for use in soup, chili and stew or pots of beans and such. Plain flakes are good shaken onto salads and sandwiches, onto dinner dishes in lieu of black pepper, etc., so you’ll want some on the table.

Powdered chilis are used to make chili powders, as primary ingredients in some chili, bean and/or rice dishes, and to make enchilada sauce or Louisiana style hot sauce. Again break the dry peppers and shake out as many seeds as you can, then grind to fine powder in a coffee grinder. I make my own chili powder with this dried powder mixed with half as much dried tomato powder, some garlic and onion powder and fine-ground sea salt. Straight, this powder is very potent, a half and half with tomato powder makes very good enchilada sauce that doesn’t burn tender mouths.

Dried chunks of chilis – best cut into pieces and then dried (green or red) store basically forever and can be tossed into dishes as they cook just like frozen pieces can. Just be careful, dried pieces are much smaller than frozen and can fool you into putting in too much. Once rehydrated and releasing their punch, your food may be too hot. Practice to get a feel for these.

Below are some good sources for all kinds of information about pepper preservation and usage that readers should definitely check out.

Pepper Links:

How to Harvest, Dry and Store Mature Red Chilis
Things to Do with Chile Peppers
GardenWeb: Hot Pepper Forum

As the various crops come in – for summer crops that is July through September in my zone 5 here in western NC – I’ll be writing about various methods of preservation. Two weeks ago it was tomatoes. Bushels and bushels of tomatoes. Last week it was the first pints of pear butter (the pears are by no means done falling, so there will be more). This week it’s peppers.

The main pepper crop will not be fully ripe until mid-September, but some bells, cayennes, thai hots, anaheims, poblanos, jalapenos, habaneros and hot banana peppers are making it into the house day to day. By the number of chilis on my pepper list readers may safely surmise that the family and friends of this homestead are fond of peppers with some heat to them. My menfolk subscribe to the culinary philosophy that a good pot of chili and/or beans is hardly worth eating unless it clears out your sinuses and makes you sweat. Things that chili powders, crushed dry peppers, pickled peppers and an assortment of hot sauces ranging from merely Cajun through 3-alarm and Nuclear all the way to Satanic are quite famous for providing.

Capsaicin and a range of capsaicinoid relatives produced by chili peppers are the compounds which provides the heat in peppers. These are classified as irritants to mucus membranes and increases secretion of gastric juices. The hotness (irritant level perceived as heat by nerves, even though the hottest peppers cannot really burn tissue) is measured in Scoville Heat Units [SHUs]. Bell and Cubanelle peppers rate a zero on the scale, with no appreciable hotness. Pimentos and regular banana peppers rate between 100 and 900 SHUs. Anaheims and Poblanos rate 1,000 to 2,500 SHUs, jalapenos 3,500 to 8,000, habaneros can weigh in at 100,000 to 500,000. The hottest peppers – the Peruvian ghost pepper , bhut jolokia peg the meter at a million SHUs or more. You do not want to take a bite out of one of these just to impress your friends at the bar.

Capsaicinoids are useful as well for use as garden pest control, effective against caterpillars and slugs. The active compounds are oily even when mixed with water to make spray, so will last through a couple of rains that aren’t downpours. Most of us are familiar with pepper spray as a self protection method. And capsaicinoids have also proven useful in topical ointments to relieve pain of arthritis and peripheral neuropathies like shingles.

Peppers can be dried, frozen pickled or canned (in a pressure canner) to preserve. At my homestead it’s drying and pickling. Today the subject is pickled peppers.

Some people add some sugar to pickled peppers, but my family isn’t fond of the taste. Sugar in the pickling liquid will serve to diminish the heat of the peppers more than no sugar liquids, so that’s something to think about for your own purposes. The regular vinegar and water pickling liquid also reduces heat a bit, which allows for good long term preservation and straight from the jar uses for even very hot peppers like jalapenos and habaneros.

The method is quite simple, which allows me to pickle peppers here and there as they accumulate. You can pickle whole (stick a knife into the side so the liquid can get into the pepper), halves pr slices. If you plan to slice hot peppers, wear some protective gloves and keep them away from your face (especially eyes and nose) the entire time you’re working. Your jars should be clean and well steamed, along with the lids. Some people process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes after filling, but as long as the jars are clean and tightly sealed, it isn’t absolutely necessary.

I add a young grape leaf to the bottom of my pickle jars before I start packing, to help keep the pickles crispy. On top of this I drop a couple of peeled cloves of garlic, half a bay leaf, half a teaspoon of sea salt, a pinch of alum and a few dill seeds. Half this for pints. Everyone has their favorite pickling spices, we’re just find of dill.

Then pack the peppers into the jars. You can remove the seeds and veins if you like, as these are where the capsaicinoids are most concentrated, but I just slice ~1/4″ thick rings of banana peppers to accompany salads, go on sandwiches, etc., thinner slices of jalapenos for nachos and such. If I can habaneros as pickles instead of hot sauce, I cut into the sides and pack them whole.

The liquid is half vinegar and half water. 1 cup each per quart. Bring it to a roiling boil, then pour it quickly into the jars to within half an inch of the top. Put on and tighten the lids and let cool enough to handle. Then you’ll want to shake the jars up good to mix the salt and alum well. Allow to cool completely and store in the fridge or on a shelf. Pepper pickles are among the easiest to make, and if your family likes hot pickled peppers it will save you considerable money through the year to have plenty of your own.

Hot sauces are kind of a version of pickled peppers, with more processing. For these I like to use frozen peppers so I can make it at my leisure during the winter. Besides, if you’ve thrown some hot peppers into freezer bags for later, it’s easy to just get one out and pop it into a pot of from-dry pinto beans or chili at any time to add significant heat. Just remember to get it out and into the compost before storing any leftovers in the fridge, or your chili will just get a whole lot hotter overnight.

To process for sauce, de-stem and add the frozen peppers to a heavy pot. I like to add onions and garlic at this time, thick-sliced or chunked. Some people add less hot green chilis and/or tomatillos as well. Boil these in water until they’re very soft, then blend the vegetables with about a cup of the cooking water until quite smooth. Put it back on the stove and add salt, any spices you wish to add, a cup of vinegar and some tomato sauce if you’re wishing to cut the heat to manageable. Some experimentation with the ‘extras’ should eventually result in a hot sauce that adds as much flavor as heat to whatever it’s used on or in. Bring to a boil, then put into sterile sauce jars and cap.

Your basic Louisiana style hot sauce is made with powdered dry cayenne, finger-hot, tobasco or other hot red peppers, added to a simmering pot of half water half vinegar and bottled. Hot vinegars for dripping on greens and such at the dinner table are easily made by packing the peppers whole into a jar and covering them with white vinegar. Keep in the fridge when it’s not on the table.

All these versions of pickled peppers are easy to make and welcome additions to the food supply if your family likes the heat. So enjoy, and stay tuned for information about drying peppers and how to process/store them.

It’s that time of year again. That late August period when “the world’s biggest pear tree” and all its younger offspring start dropping those little rock-hard cinnamon pears of mysterious variety onto the driveway to be turned into pungent pear mash that draws literal herds of deer, any passing bear within sniffing distance, flocks of turkeys and gaggles of raccoons who can never quite keep up with the bounty.

The big pear tree is 60 feet tall and more than two feet in trunk diameter. It is at least that many years old, all that remains of the original orchard on the property. It’s gorgeous in bloom in the early spring, but quite a headache in late summer as it draws so much wildlife along with swarms of yellow jackets who feast on the mash and rotting fruit beneath the tree and its offspring. About the size of plums, these are not pears that one can readily eat straight off the trees, though they do tend to survive the fall much better than those big commercial pears do. Best I’ve been able to figure from the history of this homestead over 100+ years, the orchard on the high land was planted to support the corn in the bottom land, as part of the sweet mash destined to become moonshine – something of a claim to fame for this region for a bit more than 200 years all told.

Pears are a fruit that isn’t truly ripe until after they’ve been off the tree for a day or two. My pears are not soft even when ripe-ripe. That should serve as a caution to readers who want to try my “easy to do” recipe below for making pear (or apple) butter and are using those big, luscious commercial pears rather than these semi-wild old-timey heirlooms. Those big, soft pears will cook down to mush much quicker than mine.

Pear butter (and apple, this recipe works for both) should be thick enough to spread thickly on bread or biscuits without dripping off easily. It doesn’t need or normally call for any thickening agents like corn starch. Pears are higher in pectin than apples even when ripe, and it will thicken as it cools. You’ll be keeping the handy jar in the fridge once it’s been opened. If water collects on the top when you open a jar, pour off as much as you can. Even with the original boiling juice/water included in the final mixture, mine takes about an hour simmering on low to get to a nice consistency, at 2,500 feet elevation. You want it to be thicker than store-bought applesauce.

Easy Pear (or Apple) Butter

• 4 to 4.5 lbs. ripe pears or apples, well washed and de-stemmed
• 2.5 cups water or 1.5 cups water and 1 cup pear/apple and/or orange juice
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tbsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp. any combination of nutmeg, allspice, anise and/or cloves

Cut pears into quarters/chunks into a heavy pot. Add water/juice and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and boil covered until the fruit is very soft (about 25 minutes depending on the firmness of the fruit). Stir occasionally to make sure all the fruit is well cooked. Turn off burner and let cool a bit.

Pour juice and fruit mixture into a sieve over a bowl. Mash well with a potato masher, scraping the sieve as you mash. I use a wooden spoon to finish the job of forcing the mush through the sieve, leaving behind the peels and seeds – compost. Pour the mash back into the heavy pot on low heat. Add the sugar, spices and lemon juice, mix well as it reheats.

Use the wooden spoon to prop the lid open on one side to allow steam to escape and allow the sauce to shed moisture content. Simmer on low until the sauce thickens to your taste, stirring occasionally. Pour into sterilized pint or half-pint canning jars, attach lids. Process in a water bath canner for 15 minutes. Makes 1 quart of pear butter.

• Put pear butter on toast, biscuits, waffles, pancakes, rolls, cornbread, quickbreads, muffins, bagels… whatever. Great in hot cereal, hot or cold as a fruit side or snack anytime. 1/2 cup raw local honey can be substituted for the brown sugar content, adds a flavorful richness.

• A thick pear butter will dry nicely into fruit roll-ups for snacks. Store in a zip-lock bag in the refrigerator, separated with sheets of waxed paper. Can be mixed with other fruit pastes for drying. I make silver dollar-size “chews” by dropping a hefty tablespoon full onto a drying sheet. At Christmas you can roll these and wrap separately in wax paper with twisted ends. A decorative jar of these is a most welcome gift.

Bags and boxes and baskets of tomatoes. Romas and Abe Lincolns and some other determinate heirloom I forget the name of. All ruby red and threatening to rot if not processed immediately, no human being can eat enough tomato sandwiches to dent the load.

So it’s been days’ worth of boiling water to loosen skins, a quick cold water bath, peeling, seeding coring, chopping. Having to do it in shifts to give my hands enough time to recover, hoping they don’t turn permanently wrinkled from the effort. Putting up quarts and quarts of tomato juice for drinking just because I can, and we love straight, watery tomato juice. Other boiling pots containing onion ends, the last of last year’s dried leeks and celery, fresh spices, some cuke ends and peels, pole bean pods and such, the accumulated compost of a vegetarian household added to those tomato skins and seeds and cores and trimmings to make broth for soups and stews and greens and those big wintertime pots of beans. Then to can it all in jars and put it away for later consumption.

Canned quarts of quarters. Frozen bags of chunks. Fresh tomato basil soup and tomato sandwiches and good ol’ ‘mater pies… it’s a wonder we haven’t all turned into tomatoes ourselves! And for the bulk of the gleaned harvest (the field entirely organic), drying. The solar dryer has been full of tomato quarters and chunks for days now, as much as that very nifty south porch unit can hold. The sun dries them just enough to move indoors in the evening when the sun goes down, into the oven on its lowest setting of 160 degrees, propped a little open with a spare canning ring, to finish the job. Meanwhile flats of fresh quarters and chunks get prepped for the solar dryer when the sun comes up. Start the whole process over again. Ripest fruits first because this sort of thing takes days and these babies are indeed very ripe.

Perhaps some of my readers don’t know that a full bushel of romas dried crispy can fit into a single ~2 pound plastic coffee container. And the saved container doesn’t have to be sterilized or sealed in boiling water – dried fruits and veggies require nothing more than a clean and dry container with lid. Crispy dried foods don’t need refrigeration, will keep literally for years (though none ever last that long around here). Tomatoes especially lose volume when dried, as they are primarily water to begin with. When the water’s gone, they hardly take up any room at all. And the best part is you don’t have to parboil and skin tomatoes that you dry. Still have to seed and core, cut to quarters or chunks, but leave that skin on. Lots of vitamins in those, and once they’re turned into powder or rehydrated and cooked they do not present that pointy fresh skin problem that led to parboiling and skinning preserved tomatoes in the first place.

At the end of the processing I’ll grind the crispy-dry tomatoes into powder for all sorts of uses, and it’ll fit into a single recycled 12-oz. pickle jar. Which I keep in the freezer just because I can (doesn’t take up any real room in the door shelf) to add spoonfuls to soup bases and pasta sauces, or to sprinkle on salads and sandwiches, or to make flavored table salt for Thanksgiving guests. All one need do is remember that there really is the equivalent of an entire bushel of tomatoes in that jar of powder – it’s potent, you don’t need a whole lot.

Much of the rest of the harvest will only be half-dried, put into freezer bags and stored frozen. These can be used at any time for pasta sauces and some fancy dishes, pre-soaked in a marinade that rehydrates them and gives the marinade flavor to them. Half-dried they will take up twice as much room as the crispy dried, and must be frozen or refrigerated because there’s still enough water in them to cause spoilage. But again, they need no sterile jars or lids. Half-dried tomatoes can also be packed into jars of olive oil, and those need not be refrigerated because the oil will keep them from spoiling for a few months. Such jars (never more than pints) of sun dried tomatoes in olive oil with added rosemary or basil make excellent culinary gifts my family and friends look forward to during the holidays when so much feasting is going on.

I’m down to just a couple dozen tomatoes as I write this, they must be finished up tonight because I’m having to cut off whole sections that are beginning to rot. It’s definitely a lot of finger-wrinkling work, but this ample harvest should provide my family with tomatoes enough to get through the winter. Canned or frozen you get the plump body of tomatoes, but much of their abundant vitamin C content has been lost. That’s another great thing about dried tomatoes – they retain almost all of their original complement of vitamins without loss in processing or storage. Such things can be very important during the colds and flu season, when too many people don’t get enough C.

Here’s hoping my fingers survive without permanent wrinkling, and that your tomato harvest is every bit as abundant and busy as mine has been. Oh… and because my hubby and one of my grandsons have complained that my regular ‘mater pie has too many chunky tomatoes in it for them to really like as much as they should (they just don’t like the consistency), I did an on-the-fly recipe alteration this week that has worked out extremely well. Can’t keep those pies long enough to refrigerate and enjoy for breakfast (my favorite). I’m calling it “Fresh Tomato Custard Pie,” recipe below.

Fresh Tomato Custard Pie

• Enough skinned, seeded, cored and chopped tomatoes to provide a full 4 cups (per pie)
• 3 tbsp. corn starch
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 tsp. dried basil
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella or mixed Italian cheese

Puree everything except the cheese together thoroughly in a blender or food processor until smooth and thick. Stir in the cheese and mix well. Pour this mixture into a prepared pie shell. You can cover with crust or leave open for pure custard pie. If you don’t have a top crust, sprinkle more shredded cheese on top.

Bake at 350º for 1 hour, or until the filling is semi-firm all the way through. If the crust isn’t golden by then, finish at 450º for another few minutes. Allow the pie to cool and set, at least 30 minutes. It is delicious hot (though a little runny), but I like it better cold and well-set. Excellent for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Enjoy!

For those of us fond of The Clash and their music, these past few days of London Burning for real have been… surreal. Pushing austerity to its most absurd limits, the government has slashed educational funding, jobs training programs and basic welfare – including for food – across the board just as is happening in this country with radical right-wingers holding the nation hostage in order to secure massive cuts to all forms of social aid – including medical access – in order to keep our several resource wars going indefinitely without having to tax the people making the most money off those wars. Rioting in Greece over austerity measures, in Israel over hard right-wing policies, and the “Arab Spring” that has so far brought down several governments in the Middle East and North Africa while getting NATO involved in Libya, the now 3-year old meltdown of the world economy has things on hair trigger in some rather surprising places.

Americans have not yet hit the streets violently, though things economically show no signs of easing up as markets plunge and hunger raises its ugly head all over the place. ABC News offered a rather amazing article August 8th touting Dumpster Diving as a way to get no-cost food – featuring New York City – that raises far more questions than it could ever possibly answer. Is dumpster diving okay? Is it a threat to public health? Is it acceptable for people to be getting their food this way? My God… what have we come to in this country?

ABC makes it sound like a voluntary “movement” among people who just don’t WANT to spend money on food. But for those of us who have some real idea of the actual time and energy expended in a “hunter-gatherer” lifestyle, this new version doesn’t suggest that these people have any actual money to be saving by raiding dumpsters all day long. In fact, despite ABC’s portrayal of this “Freegan” lifestyle as some sort of “movement” to be weighed for existential value, it would appear by their own admission that these people have no means of transportation aside from their feet and maybe an old bike, are “squatting” in old buildings without indoor plumbing or electricity, and are long-term unemployed in one of the most expensive cities on the continent.

I cannot imagine having to raid dumpsters just to eat, though I have in my life picked up aging produce from the back of the grocery to feed to my guinea pigs and rabbits. I’ve gleaned fields of neighbors with larger, more mechanized farms for leftover potatoes and other veggies I could preserve or donate to the food bank. There’s a big tomato field near my sister’s place that is literally rotting in the sun right now because the illegal immigrants who used to pick the produce have all been deported. I’m taking a few baskets and boxes down this evening to gather what I can for preserving. Heck, I even accepted a couple of bushels of old onions from a passing truck once when we were camping on the Rio Grande. He was going to a dump, the onions didn’t look that bad to me. Spent the entire afternoon cutting out rot and slicing the rest into a water bath canner pot over a wood fire, and cooked up the largest pot of onion soup anybody’d ever seen. As campers smelled the bounty and wandered over to see what was cooking, I soon had carrots and potatoes and celery and herbs and some stewing meat and a few other things to toss into the pot – which quickly grew to two pots – and by dinnertime we had a grand community feast and told stories well into the night.

…but it’s not what I’d care to do for a living. And I’m sure you wouldn’t either. We who have chosen to live outside the urban danger zones and have committed ourselves to being as self-sufficient as possible cannot sit by and presume things won’t get very, very bad in our cities and towns too when people come to the end of their cut-off ropes and find they have nothing left and nowhere to turn. Things will not be getting better for the foreseeable future unless fundamental changes occur. And fundamental changes are not going to come from D.C. or from our state houses, where the political game of high dudgeon is played primarily for cash contributions from corporate lobbyists and we the people count for nothing.

Here in the Wise Living Journal’s hunger archive there are quite a few articles about hunger in America and how homesteaders can escape it themselves as well as help out their neighbors. A 3-part series titled Feeding The Hungry lists and describes some innovative anti-hunger programs we can not only contribute to, but could expand to include our friends and neighbors to help out regional food banks that are currently running very low on food, and supply feeding programs in our larger towns and cities where people don’t have the means to grow their own food.

We can be part of a new way of seeing things, helping to change a harsh and hopeless reality bottom-up. Politicians will come around eventually if we go ahead and make necessary changes for ourselves. Or be left behind when new politicians from among the ranks of the people rise to prominence by virtue of leadership in making those necessary changes.

A word to my homesteading readers, rural, semi-rural and urban: Don’t you dare neglect to harvest everything you possibly can this year. If you can’t use or preserve it, get it to someone who can, while it’s still fresh. Volunteer to glean neighbor’s fields, and get that bounty to those who will give it away or preserve it for later. Sign up to teach a preservation class to others in your area. How to can various things, how to build solar food dryers, how to use the preserved food. Education is always useful to those who don’t know what you have to teach. And please don’t neglect that fall garden this year just because it’s a lot of trouble. Chances are that the price of fresh food is going to go through the roof this fall and winter as the conditions that have led to entire fields being abandoned such as is happening in my area hit the market with drastic shortages. A lot of people will be going hungry. Even more are losing their means to prepare foods or even stay warm when winter hits as those subsidies are stripped systematically as well.

Don’t wait for the politicians, they are doing just fine and their families aren’t hurting at all. It’s going to be up to us to help our our neighbors and communities, and we need to spread the word. It’s bad enough that people in this country die every year because they have no access to medical care (45,000+, and the figure is growing). Do we want to live in a country where they also starve to death or freeze to death if disease doesn’t get them first? It’s up to we the people because our leadership won’t do anything to help. We need to get down to business right now.

In looking around for more information about edibles we can gather without having to grow them in our fields and gardens, I was again reminded of that voracious “Vine that Ate the South” – kudzu. We hear about how the leaves and tender vine ends are high-protein greens either for animal fodder (goats especially love it) or for pot likker greens you can make for dinner. There is usually a sort of side note whenever you read about kudzu that says the root starch is used in China and Japan as “food,” usually unspecified. Those of us who homestead in the south where kudzu has managed to claim millions of acres all for itself, should probably learn about all the ways this plant can be consumed. Not just greens, flower jelly and flower wine.

Originally planted as an ornamental, government and railroad workers planted it across the south in the 1930s for erosion control. It can grow up to 2 feet a day, cover everything in its path, and no known herbicide is ultimately effective against it. The roots can weigh as much as 200 pounds and extend underground to a depth of 10 feet, no topical herbicide is going to kill something like that. All parts of the plant except shallow, bark-covered smaller roots are edible, but it’s unlikely any homestead could consume enough spring shoots, vine ends, leaves or roots in a year to keep it from taking over valuable fields. A herd of goats is about the only thing known to actually keep it under control.

Kudzu has a long history in herbal medicine and shows some promise as a treatment for chronic alcoholism, high blood pressure and as a systemic alterative for colds and flu. But this doesn’t override its value as a wild food source. Roots are dug in the winter, after the kudzu has died back for the season. That annual die-back leads to a thick accumulation of fine compost that can be gathered at the same time and used as a garden amendment. Just be sure to sift first through a screen to remove seeds so you don’t introduce kudzu to your beds. Roots are best dug with a fork like potatoes. If you find a big one you may have dig out around it with a spade. You want the fat, deep roots. If all you can find are the tree root like shallow ones, remove the bark first and only use as powder.

Kudzu root can be used as a general root vegetable in soups and stews, stores well without drying in a good root cellar with your turnips and rutabagas. Or it can be sliced and dried, stored in jars like other dried produce. Once dry it is easily powdered in the usual manner to be used as a thickener for stews and soups, pies and quiches, or as a high protein vegetable-based flour.

It is the root flour that is most often used in Asia for a staple food item. In Korea and China it is mixed with arrowroot powder and made into pasta/noodles. Both the kudzu powder and arrowroot are starches, so cornstarch should work as well. The noodles are nearly transparent, highly nutritious and can be fortified with wheat or rice flour, potato or bean flour, etc.

Making your own pasta and noodles is quite the operation, but well worth it in the fall and winter when it’s not so hot and humid. My family likes home made herbed pastas, veggie pastas made with powdered dry tomatoes, greens, beets, etc. and such. Well dried home made pastas will keep just like store bought pasta, or can be frozen. This year I will be making noodles with kudzu as well.

“The Vine that Ate the South” offers us a highly nutritious staple food we should not overlook in our efforts to live self sufficiently off the land.

Following a useful group series called Living Simply: Zero Waste has me thinking about what goodies from the kitchen gets tossed into the compost pile and how much of it might be useful for some other purpose. The series deals with all kinds of waste, of course, the things that go into our trash cans versus what goes into recycling, etc. And readership includes mostly people who live in urban environments. Things like food packaging and general trash items, getting those down as far as possible by recycling things like used batteries, those ‘planned obsolescence’ disposable electronics, plastics, glass, etc.

We homesteaders who have to haul our own trash and recyclables to the “Inconvenient Center” whenever we’ve got time while the darned dumpster station is actually open are pretty good at doing the separating. Especially for things like metals that can not only be recycled, but which we get paid for by the pound. But the question of food waste is quite pertinent this time of year, as crops start coming in and spring beds are cleaned out for fall crop planting. Which I definitely need to do, and would have already done by now if it weren’t so blasted HOT. At any rate, let’s look at the various compostables for what they might be put to best use for, considering how valuable compost actually is for purposes of growing things.

Right now the peas from spring are done and the fall crop hasn’t yet been planted. But beans are coming in fast in large rushes. If you are growing pole beans like I am (take up less room, are way more abundant than bush beans), you may be growing varieties best purposed for shelled beans than your basic green bean. I have for many years tossed the pods from shelled peas and beans into the compost bucket, but it turns out you can fry them up into a nice finger food once you’ve removed the seeds.

Another good idea is to maintain a good tight-lidded container in the fridge to hold scraps from various vegetables – carrot, leek and onion tops and ends, broccoli and cauliflower stems, those pea/bean pods, tomato cores and skins, the tough stems of kale, collards and chard, potato and/or eggplant skins, fresh corn cobs, pretty much any actual food-food waste generated when processing for canning, freezing or drying. When the container nears full, put it all into a stock pot and boil it up with the addition of some fresh but less-than-presentable herbs (like older parsley, spotted sage, holey basil, etc.) for veggie soup stock. This can be strained and canned to keep all through the winter and used instead of water for meat-based soup stocks, gravies, etc., or just by itself as veggie stock for soups or for cooking dry beans and such.

You can salt it before canning so it’s ready-to-use, or omit the salt and add it later when you’re making something with it. Once the good flavor and valuable nutrients have been boiled out into stock, the leavings of course go right back into the regular compost. It’s like getting twofers from your hard gardening work, and well worth the effort. If you do the hot processing outside on the grill so it doesn’t heat the house, it saves energy and money as well.

If your homestead boasts some dogs – as mine does – you also know that dogs love vegetables as much as we do, and love leftovers even more. There are vegetables dogs shouldn’t eat, but about a quarter of their regular diet should be vegetable (and is in most dry dog foods). Vegetables for dogs should be cooked or steamed, though some like ‘em raw. Remove tomato and onion parts from your unsalted soup stock leavings and your dog will scarf it down no problem. Here’s a good source for pet nutrition, and another with info for home made pet foods.

When all is said and done, kitchen scraps can go into the compost as-is, along with the rest of the yard and garden trimmings, weeds and leaves in the fall. It all makes very good mulch and additions to our gardens, allowing us to grow more food. But the idea of us or our pets getting every bit of nutrition from our food crops is very good, and makes the entire system a whole lot more efficient.

As the economic situation gets steadily worse – the second recessive ‘dip’ is already upon us and once the economic indicators are recalculated we may already be in negative GDP territory. Now that the Congress has passed their very ill-conceived austerity program and put a “Gang of 12″ in charge of slashing and burning, we should be all the way into major depression by Christmas, with real unemployment pushing 20%. We need to be even more attentive than usual to getting the most out of our gardens and livestock, go ahead and plan for those winter crops we could grow in cold frames, preserve every last bit of food however we can, and hang on tight. It’s going to be a rough ride.

Toward that project, I’ll be blogging about grains this month. Grain is getting more and more expensive to buy, but few homesteaders without lots of flatland acreage and a tractor grow any of their own beyond sweet corn or field corn for the livestock. Grains being an important part of our (and our pets’) diet, I’ll be looking at the best and most productive grains to grow in the garden or along the edges of our yards and fallow fields, and how to process and use them. I’ll also be looking at wild grains that we may have access to, as well as local grains you may be able to barter for from a neighbor who grows wheat or barley. It will be important for us to have some poundage of whole grains carefully stored away to make it through until next summer. We are lucky, as many people will be going hungry before things get better. We have to be realistic, plan for this future, and get all our ducks in a row. So please stay tuned!

Useful Links:

Living Simply: Zero Waste
Foods Scrap Cuisine
Home Made Pet Diets
How to Compost Food Scraps
CalRecycle: Food Scraps Management
Frugal dilemmas: food scraps, or more food?

Over the past two weeks a rather spectacular one-two punch of severe weather wreaked havoc across the eastern half of the nation from Texas to Virginia. Many of us were stunned by the huge, mile-wide F4 tornado that plowed a deadly path through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama. That monster and as many as a hundred other tornados killed more than 300 people in 5 states and injured thousands who literally had no place to hide as the winds flattened homes, apartment buildings and businesses completely, even to blasting out the concrete slabs and tearing up streets and sidewalks. It is the deadliest tornado outbreak since the Great Depression.

A friend who lives on a well-planned homestead in southern Tennessee posted on FaceBook about the damage from a tornado in his neck of the woods that downed trees and power lines wholesale, but spared him and his family and even his goats. He was feeling darned lucky even though the devastation across TVA’s service area – and the station blackout that shut down the three reactors at Browns Ferry – made it likely that his ‘stead would be without electricity for days, maybe a week or more. We who live on the land know from experience that we aren’t the first people in line to have our services restored after a nasty storm. First in line are the people in urban areas where shelters and hospitals and emergency services must be restored as quickly as possible to minimize the human cost of nature’s wrath.

I am now quite jealous of the amount of serious planning my friend put into his move from the city to the land a few years ago. In response to a question about how his family was set for food storage in the time it would take to get the electricity back on, he said that’s the least of his worries. Seems he has a well-stocked solar powered freezer that doesn’t need TVA at all. Heck, as long as a homestead is capable of operating despite the ravages of storms and downed power lines, the need to use oil lamps at night can be considered romantic! I’ve gotta get me some solar powered refrigeration for sure, though this item on the wish list may have to wait (along with others) for the day when I finally win the lottery I never play…

At any rate, I went surfing the web on my computer – which fortunately didn’t have to go without electricity because the tornados jumped the mountains and didn’t come down again until they were between Charlotte and Raleigh. I found that there are several companies out there specializing in solar powered refrigeration. Backwoods Solar Electric Systems offers units from several manufacturers along with the peripherals you’ll need to get them up and operating.

If you’ve priced new, efficient standard electrical refrigerators lately, you know the nice ones are approaching the $2,000 range. A solar powered, direct current system for a refrigerator or freezer unit can cost twice that much when all the costs are added up – the solar panels, the converters, the batteries, etc. The appliances themselves are well insulated and energy efficient, but still suck up a lot of ‘trons during the course of a day – averaging between 200 and 800 watt hours per day. Size matters, of course, and an 800-watt solar collector takes up some serious room. Some come with an AC/DC switch so that you could use regular electricity and save the draw on your household solar for when the electricity’s out. That would separate the costs on the system so that household solar generation isn’t solely dedicated to the refrigeration in normal times, as refrigerators and freezers are big users.

The SunDanzer company offers some battery-free, direct solar units that are somewhat compact but surprisingly efficient and not more expensive than a regular new appliance without the solar panels added in. Solartron Technologies offers a modest size, ultra high efficiency battery refrigeration/freezer unit that can be operated with just an 85 watt solar panel that costs less than $500. The batteries and peripherals will hike the initial price considerably, and I know many homesteaders who would dearly love to be able to operate off-grid if they have to, but are reluctant to invest in those expensive batteries that need semi-regular replacement. It’s far easier to simply go with the backwards meter. For them, the AC/DC switchable for straight running off the panels in times when the grid is down will probably serve as well and involve less investment cost over the long run.

When you sit down to figure out what your homestead actually needs in the way of reliable electric power, the water pump from well or spring looms large (at least, at my place) along with food storage – refrigeration. I don’t know many homesteads that heat the house or greenhouse with electricity, as there are much better ways to get heat that are not so wasteful. Lights aren’t that big an issue either, as oil lamps are quite nice and most people I know don’t do their hard homestead work in the dark anyway. Who needs lights when you’re sleeping? If the family is unable to entertain themselves without television or desktop computers, you’ll have to add in that much generation capacity as well. Though I am dreaming of a stationary bicycle or the treadle and wheel unit from an old sewing machine as a way to generate computer ‘trons when the regular power goes out. That ram jet I forever plan to build and install down at the creek to pump water from the spring cistern to the top of the ridge so we can then get gravity feed to the house would save us a lot on the 220 pump that’s now in the cistern. We heat with wood and don’t need air conditioning, so refrigeration would definitely be our biggest user of generated power once we get the ram jet, solar panels and wind turbine installed.

So I’ve added solar powered refrigeration to my wish list for when I win the lottery and have the money to invest. Until then, if the electricity goes out for several days at a time from anything that’s not a blizzard or ice storm in the middle of winter (when keeping food cold isn’t difficult at all), I’ll have to stick with transferring cold items to plastic milk crates in the creek. Not very convenient, but workable because being spring fed, the water stays right at 40-45 degrees all year long.

And yes, I’m still darned jealous of my friend’s impressive foresight to have planned for this contingency when he built his place, as well as his ability to thumb his nose at TVA when the lights go out. A new modern malady for us back to the landers – Homestead Envy. I’ve got it…

Links:

Backwoods Solar Electric Systems
SunDanzer
Solartron Technologies

February has always been “The Longest Month” of the year. Which is no doubt why they made it the shortest month of the year. It’s cruel, it’s cold, it’s interminable as the days get longer and the longing for spring becomes almost unbearable. So February is when I start my early spring crops in flats, place them on shelves in the big library window facing south. Up right now and looking good are the Russian Red kale, Winterbore kale, spinach, white and purple onions and a first rush of 60 pea plants.

This February has been warmer than most here in southern Appalachia, which gets our hopes up too high too fast, I know. We can bet real money that it’ll get very cold again very soon, and we just might get a blizzard in March. So I have been careful not to get ahead of myself.

Grandson built a moveable cold frame of salvaged windows that is definitely going to come in handy, but we haven’t really started on the soil turning yet. Need to do that, get the accumulated weeds out, and dig in some good compost. We built a nifty pea support contraption yesterday of PVC, over which we can add the actual string supports when the bed’s ready. Then we can plant the first rush seedlings on one side, and direct seed a second rush on the other side to extend our crop and harvest time. Spinach seedlings will go in with direct-seeded lettuces, and the kales will go into a separate bed I’ll interplant with radishes.

Potatoes really must go in by mid-March, so thankfully my Ronniger’s Potato Garden catalogue got here in the nick of time. Now, many people will claim – with some validity – that potatoes are so cheap to buy at the grocery that it’s silly to take up valuable garden space with them. But good, varietal and organic potatoes aren’t that easy to find in the grocery store, and potatoes are actually so easy to grow that I think everybody should plant some! This year I’m going with some purple vikings, bison reds, and a nice yellow variety I haven’t decided on yet (so many to choose from!).

I am in zone 7 per my nice little microclime here at the ‘stead, which means I could grow two crops of potatoes a year if I wanted. Haven’t done it yet, but with more family moving in to get through the depression, I might go ahead and do a fall crop this year too. Going intensive on the greens, beans, winter squash, tubers, onions and such as well, and doubling up the tomatoes and peppers, planting plenty of celeriac, beets, turnips and parsnips. The root crops, winter squash, pumpkins and potatoes will keep all winter in hay in my under-shed root cellar – I want it to be full this year. Grandson and I will have to build another solar food dryer too, so we can keep up.

Deal is, you don’t need multiple acres and expensive equipment to produce a lot of food. Urban and suburban homesteaders can produce quite a lot. My actual truck space in the garden is about a third of an acre, I’ve kept it for nearly 20 years by myself, will have some extra hands this year. Which is good, because I’m 60 years old this year! Planned well and managed well, only the long-season crops put space out of commission so long you can’t get at least a couple of crops before next winter. And if you’re willing to do the work, interplanting and intensive planting can definitely return a lot. Always amend with good compost and some fish fertilizer if you can get hold of some. Have a ready supply of very hot habanero juice for managing soft-bodied bugs, get used to stripping hard-bodied beetles with your hands (they don’t bite) and getting rid of them. Twice a day for some crops.

Today it’s nearly 70º, the lady bugs are swarming out of their winter havens. While pruning grapes, apples and roses, I left all the mantis ‘nests’ I encountered. Encouraging helpful bugs works almost as well as picking off the unhelpful ones. And if you are like me and don’t spend any time in the hot summer sun if you can help it, plan to do your garden chores early in the morning or in the evening hours after the sun is down. The garden will love you just as much for it, but you won’t be too sweaty and uncomfortable while doing your jobs.

Oh… and by all means, get busy on those newspaper pots! These cost you little or nothing, are easy to make, and can be planted out just like peat pots when that time comes.

Having battled out of control pumpkin vines all summer, I’m glad to report that the last of the pumpkin harvest is finally complete. It rained so much that several rotted on the ground, they’ve been tossed into the compost bin from which I expect next year’s greedy vines will take off. I’d planted an heirloom variety of pie-size pumpkins, not realizing that everywhere there was a leaf there would root a whole new vine. Thus the minimal planting of only 4 vines ended up literally everywhere! It grew over the mints and into the brick pathway. It grew through the roses and tried to cover the grapes. It grew out into the 3rd goal disc golf fairway and down the hill towards the bottomland drop-off. I was literally lopping off new vines daily just to keep some control (and some of my other crops)! Since the compost bin is on the fairway side of the garden, I’m going to go ahead and let the pumpkins have it next year.

Now, processing pumpkins – even pie-size pumpkins of 5 pounds or less – is an arduous task taking lots of time and energy. I spread it out over a couple of weeks, once haviing brought them inside when the temperature dropped to freezing. Once frost is upon them they go fast. Protected from frost in a dry, cool basement or root cellar, they’ll keep for months. So while it’s possible to avoid all that processing by spreadiing it out over the entire winter one pumpkin at a time, pumpkin simply doesn’t last long enough around this homestead to justify not doing it all at once well before the holiday season. I’ve got grandkids who can each eat an entire pie at a single sitting, and grown relatives who fully expect their pumpkin/hickory nut bread along with the fudge and cookies in December (my standard Christmas gifting). One thing you never want to do is find yourself processing a pumpkin at the same time you’re baking cookies/bread and making fudge. You’ll end up not sleeping for days…

Ended up with 12 full quarts of puree, ten of which were bagged and frozen with two for immediate pie-making. This involves cutting, cleaning, peeling and chunking the pumpkin – I like chunks no bigger than 1-2 inches – and saving the seeds. From each of these meaty pumpkins I got about 2/3 usable fruit and 1/3 compost waste, which is a lot better than large modern pumpkin’s yield of half and half.

First, the seeds. squeeze them loose from the stringy pulp, and set aside in a bowl, but don’t wash them. Stir occasionally while processing the rest of the pumpkin to let them dry out a bit. After you’re done using the oven, turn it back to 250º for the seeds. Ad 1 tbsp. vegetable oil per 3 cups of seeds and 1/2 to 1 tsp. of non-iodized salt. You could lessen salt and add pie spices, or chili powder for flavored snacks. Stir well, spread thinly on a baking sheet, and let roast at 250º for an hour. If not good and dry by then, separate and stir, return to the oven for another 15-20 minutes. When dry let them cool and store in zip-lock bag or airtight jar. Eat whole, they crunch easily! High in vitamins E and A, iron, magnesium and trace minerals.

I fill a large oblong cake pan with chunks in a single layer, add 1/4″ of water, cover and bake at 350º for 20 minutes. Puree the soft chunks in the blender (you’ll need to add some water, as little as possible to make it blend well) and pour into quart-size zip-lock freezer bags. These I allow to freeze solid lying flat for a day, and when that’s done they’re the size of a thin box of frozen vegetables and can be stacked or slotted as easily. Some people go ahead and box the bags, but I’m not big on excess packaging. Flat frozen they’re easy enough to find room for.

A quart of puree will make 2 large, deep pumpkin pies or 3 pre-made pie shell size pies. Rather than use the standard pumpkin pie recipe that comes on the back of those cans of pumpkin puree on sale at Thanksgiving in the grocery store, I use a much older ‘traditional’ recipe that my pumpkin pie connoisseur grandson thinks is much better than any other ready-made or home-made from canned pie he’s ever had. Best part is that you don’t have to buy those cans of evaporated milk, which aren’t good for much besides pie or fudge and are always in short supply on a moment’s notice. It’s also very easy…

For a large, deep pie:

2 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup brown sugar
3 medium eggs (2 extra large or 4 small)
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. corn starch
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. each allspice, ginger, nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

You can go ahead and use the pre-mixed Pumpkin Pie Spice from the spice aisle, or a new spice mix my grandson picked out and now insists upon – a McCormick “Gourmet Collection” blend called Chinese Five Spice. It contains (in order of appearance per the label) anise, cinnamon, star anise, cloves and ginger. The anise gives a bit of a licorice flavoring, I compensate with a quarter teaspoon of extra ginger. If you’re using a blend, 1.5 to 2 tsps. per pie.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425º, then at 350º for ~45 minutes more or until the pie is firm and a butter knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. I like not using “the usual” spice blend or recommends, as they tend to make your pie taste way too much like everyone else’s. That Chinese blend with anise and some extra ginger (which most people don’t use) is truly different, and vanilla in the mix adds a little something unusual as well. Try it!

In addition to the puree, I also dedicated a whole pumpkin to slices. Got it down to meat, then cut into 1.5 x 1.5 inch slices between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. Froze into four family-size portions without blanching or baking, as you’ll want these semi-dry to make sautees spice slices, a truly great side-dish with any meal, particularly good for holiday meals. The same dish can be made with chunks – and the half to three-quarter inch chunks tend to hold together well – but I just prefer the look and texture of the thin slices instead.

To make, first melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a heavy pan on medium-low heat, add your favorite spices or blend (total of about a tablespoon’s worth) and 1/4 cup brown sugar or maple syrup. Keep on the heat until the butter clarifies and the spices release to the fat. Pour into a bowl and add 1/4 cup lemon juice, mix well and add the pumpkin. Stir often to ensure all the pumpkin gets time in the liquid, let it marinate for a couple of hours.

Strain out the pumpkin and reserve the butter/spice/lemon mixture. Put it into a large frying pan on medium and let the lemon juice reduce out. When down to mostly butter and spice, add 2 more tbsp. of butter. When hot add the pumpkin and let it simmer until the bottom starts to brown, flip-stir with a spatula and continue sauteeing for another few minutes. When done you may wish to put the pan under the broiler long enough to evenly brown the top. Very yummy!

That sautee recipe is also good for winter squash if you get sick of the basic mushy baked stuff. Pumpkins and winter squash are jam packed with vitamins and are one of the most nutritious foods the season has to offer. It’s good to remember that pumpkin can always be substituted for winter squash in cookbook recipes, and visa versa. Try those chunks in a hearty winter soup too, always delicious on cold days.

If readers have any favorite pumpkin/winter squash recipes or preservation hints, do let us know!